Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Conventional Wisdom Index Week 1

So who's had a good week? Are their fortunes on the up or on the wane? My Conventional Wisdom Index seeks to track the fortunes of the major players in British politics. Next installment next Saturday...

Cameron, strong budget speech??? Iain, you are a wag. It was truly, truly awful. I don't think he has performed as bad as some of my colleagues say at the despatch box. But, the budget performance, phew! Something else.

Principally you, supported by Guido, have helped to deflect the attempt by Labour and its legion of supporters in the media to "fit up" the Conservatives in the current loans "scandal".As regards the ICM poll, YouGov indicated a better result. ICM polls always seem to overstate Labour support by about two points, on average.As regards the performance of David Cameron, the current rule of thumb is that the better his performance, the more he is likely to be rubbished by certain commentators. For my part, his "error" last Wednesday was being a little too animated.

Cameron came to office promising an end to the 'Punch & Judy politics' and then used his Budget reply platform to slap Gordon around in a viciously personal attack. And yet, it didn't ring true - it seemed too staged and over-prepared. It isn't easy having to reply to the budget speech, but I would have thought that Cameron had the intellectual nous to find something to criticise, rather than just relying on performing a pre-prepared script.

Of course, it was all about the soundbites and the campaign to label the Tories as 'New' compared to Labour. In that, it was reasonably successful, but shouldn't we expect politics to be more about policy?